I'd be quite surprised if Sony added DE support before companies like bookeen/cybook and jinke/hanlin. The later have no proprietary content format to defend, it's only an issue of negotiating with adobe and writing the code. Sony has to wait for sales to slump before they'd consider writing the code. If Sony was willing to offer alternatives, they'd already be offering mobipocket support. They obviously have the resources to write a mobipocket or DE client if they wanted to.

Thanks nairbv! Both Sony and Adobe have made public announcements (albeit somewhat ambiguous) regarding the availability of DE on the Sony Reader sometime next year. They seem committed to this path. Do you know if Bookeen has said anything about supporting any other formats on the Cybook? (I thought Mobi's contract forbade them from implementing competing DRM schemes on the device -- is this not so?)

In any case, I don't know how much value we're going to get out of having DE on any of these devices in the short term. I'm assuming it'll take some time for the DE format to propagate, and 18 / 24 months from now I'll probably be deciding on my second reader anyways.

I would suggest that you download the free Mobi desktop reader from mobipocket.com and take a look at some Mobi books for yourself.

Thanks Harry. For the record, I currently read Mobi-format files on my Nokia N73, and have used them in the past in a variety of Palm and WinCE devices. (I've only used non-DRM Mobi files thus far.) I have no qualms with the quality of the Mobi books I've read thus far.

That said, it's important for me to be able to produce my own books, and the tools available for the LRF format seem much better. I also dislike the fact that Mobipocket assumes everyone uses Windows. IMO this is as big a gaffe as offering a US-only book store. (Not that Sony is any better in this regard, but there are alternatives available for the Sony.)

Options 1 and 2 seem like easy answers, but are they legal? Are they morally wrong?

About the first option...

- Why would it be illegal? You're not creating a fake US passport or anything, you said you were a resident to some automated form on the internet. Who's going to arrest you for registering on an internet store? o_O

Edit: wait, you're not claiming to be a resident, you're just saying you live in the US or have an address there. Seriously is that a crime I don't know about?

A lot of people have different accounts on the Playstation3 for example and use fake japaneses addresses to get a japanese account and d/l stuff from their store that hasn't yet made it to the US ones. It's not a big deal.

- Morally... wrong? You're registering to a store that wants your buisness. I'm sure they'd be open in every country in the world if they could, but can't for whatever reasons. And you're paying for whatever you're buying. It's like traveling to the US and buying stuff from a mall there. Well not exactly but you get the point.

I found this thread/forum when I was googling PRS-505 and mobipocket. I'm planning to get my first ebook reader soon but I'm not sure which, and I'll be using it outside the US. Your post kinda scared me, think of this post as me also replying to myself, heh.

Kindle though works everywhere, maybe not the wireless connection but you can connect to the store and buy stuff. Though maybe you need a US credit card and address, I don't know. hmmmm....

fanta: I think he was referring to breaking DRM on DRM books so that he could use them on a device that's incompatible with that format. As far as I know it is illegal to break DRM, though I don't think it could be considered morally wrong in these cases.

Personally, I wouldn't risk buying a sony or kindle outside the US... but, I wouldn't risk buying one inside the US either so...

I'm having trouble with this decision because I don't have definitive answers to a few questions:

Options 1 and 2 seem like easy answers, but are they legal? Are they morally wrong? (I know the legal issues of converting have been addressed in other threads. I'm not convinced there's a definitive answer yet.)

<snip>

What do you think?

I think our society is doomed.

First, it's absurd for anyone to say "I'll sell you this on the condition that you not take it out of ____ country." That's ridiculous. If you agree to such a contract, you deserve your position as a slave. (Slaves were taught that, for them, reading was wrong - except when their master told them it was OK.)

When you can not buy a book and read it because of moral issues, you have gone over to the thought process common during the NAZI book burnings.

Then there's the absurd complication of your questions...I'm a college professor, and I don't understand what the problem is. It is illegal (under common law, dating to the Hammurabi Code) to have any law that is not published and easily understandable.

Here's a quick summary of why FREE MEN ignore the law:
* IP laws in the US and EU are inherently void due to their complexity.
* All federal laws in the US are void due to the fact that they are not published. Congress claims they are online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov, but a quick check will reveal that you can not find any particular section of the CFR, even if you know what you are looking for.
* The CFR is enforced on what people do in their homes, when it can only apply to interstate commerce (see Article I of the Constitution of the US) and the entire CFR is void once again.
* The Preamble to the Bill of Rights says that a legitimate government will follow those rights. The US Govt. operates in violation of those rights, and outside the powers given to it in the Constitution of the US. (E.g., Congress has the power to "coin money," not to authorize a private corporation with no assets that has never been audited to print notes.) Therefore, the US Govt. is not a government, but an organized crime syndicate.

Some would claim that the 10th Amendment gives power to the "States." "States" is an arcane term that has not been used correctly by the US Govt. in over 100 years. "States" are governmental entities that accept no funding from the federal govt. The "State of Texas" (for example) is not a "State" but a part of the federal government due to its' acceptance of federal monies. Because this "state" attempts to enforce laws outside of the purview of the federal government, and because it does not follow the procedures laid out in the Constitution of the US, it has lost its standing as a legitimate government, and is a organized crime syndicate.

If you let them enforce laws on you after all this, you are a slave.

Some would ask how I manage to ignore the laws? It's simple - every educated person knows how illegal the government's actions are. Educated police allow free men to go about their business without interference. Thugs with badges (the other 1/2 of cops) can be backed down - you just need to be better armed and more brutal than they are.

What really throws me for a loop, is that you are a magazine publisher, and you ask these questions?!?! How the @#$^ did we get someone who hates free speech as much as you do working for a government censored magazine...never mind.

If, at this point, you can not imagine how the government can censor a magazine, then you are a brain-washed slave with no chance for freedom.

Interesting post. Although referring to everyone who obeys laws as "slaves," invoking Nazis (a sure Internet sign of a lost argument! ), and asserting that IP laws are "inherently void due to their complexity" (at times like this I wish we had a 'wtf!' smiley) and that "All federal laws in the US are void due to the fact that they are not published" (WTF!) are a real stretch.

One quick clue as to the DRM and IP issues: creative works are the PROPERTY of the owner. You can receive a license to read/listen to/enjoy the work under certain circumstances. However, owners of such property have the right to limit its distribution. Unauthorized distribution of property that you don't own is STEALING and is illegal.

There is a necessary balance and conflict between limiting distribution of a creative work (e.g., through DRM attached to e-books) and allowing a purchaser full access to the creative work (e.g., converting it into other formats for his/her own use). There is no simple solution at present that gives full access to such works to authorized users while protecting the rights of the owners.

Beyond that, I found your post quite inflammatory (and frankly, naive). It looks like we may have to add a Political forum here if this keeps on.

OK, this is probably the wrong to place to post this, but I'm wondering why in the world PDF's wouldn't display properly on the Sony if they are tagged PDF's. I have been reading PDF's for years on my tiny Axim x50 and I can make the text as big as I want without having to zoom in and out. Are you all saying that the PDF's for DE aren't going to be accessible? I highly doubt that.

OK, this is probably the wrong to place to post this, but I'm wondering why in the world PDF's wouldn't display properly on the Sony if they are tagged PDF's. I have been reading PDF's for years on my tiny Axim x50 and I can make the text as big as I want without having to zoom in and out. Are you all saying that the PDF's for DE aren't going to be accessible? I highly doubt that.

On your AXim you had tagged text and reflow. The Sony can use neither of these features, nor can it zoom. Read the wiki article on PDF for more details.

I don't completely understand what DE is... I mean, isn't it just epub? or maybe it's software that plays epub files? epub's cool because it's supposed to be a standard and all, but it's just another file format right? and then the ones adobe sells are encrypted to only work on one computer?

My point was that I don't imagine companies like sony and amazon supporting a DRM format that will take away from revenue they derive from another DRM model. I think DE plays unencrypted epub files too right? Maybe they just mean those?

I imagine everyone will eventually want to support the epub formats, .. but that's just like supporting txt or html... not really anything exceptional or even difficult. I just looked in an epub file and it IS just zipped html with some really ugly looking extra meta data sprawled across three XML files. Seems kinda lame to me actually. Maybe there's something I don't understand about what's involved,.. but I feel like they should have been able to make it look a little nicer if that's all they were going to do.

So I'm searching around to see what you mean. I see one of the "ambiguous" quotes you seem to be referring to saying sony will "embed Adobe Digital Editions technology into its portable reader" The "technology" behind DE is epub though... a "standardization" just like pdf is a "standardization." I hate PDF files.

Wasn't mobipocket talking about moving to epub too? That doesn't make the encrypted versions compatible any more than mobi and azw are compatible (even though they are inherently the same format). Everyone thought the kindle would support mobi pocket books since amazon owns mobipocket. It does support them. Unencrypted ones.

and even if I'm wrong about the meaning of DE, they could just outright lie to us. If they're being ambiguous that could be an indication.

Hopefully I'm wrong... but it seems it wouldn't make business sense for them to give you as much as you seem to think they will. It's a conflict of interests. Even if they do do it, there'd be an incentive to do it poorly. Maybe after the connect store isn't profitable anymore, and they've stop selling sony books anyways?

I don't like the idea of DE anyways. I feel like Adobe writes crap software. Some flash based bloat to buy books with. blech.

Are you sure the cybook mobipocket deal is exclusive? I wasn't aware of that. sucks if it is. The Hanlin/jinke people said they have a contract to support mobipocket, even though they also have a proprietary wolf format,.... so from that we know that mobipocket isn't by necessity an exclusive contract.

All in all what I'm saying is that it seems like it makes more business sense for companies like jinke/hanlin, bookeen/cybook, or iliad to be nice to us regarding DRM content than it does for companies like amazon and sony. ... and so I'd favor the companies that have more incentives to be nice to us.

I don't completely understand what DE is... I mean, isn't it just epub? or maybe it's software that plays epub files? epub's cool because it's supposed to be a standard and all, but it's just another file format right? and then the ones adobe sells are encrypted to only work on one computer?

DE is a replacement for the eBook capability that was being added to the Adobe Reader at one point and then backed out. Adobe decided that merging of the two technologies was a bad idea. DE is nothing but a program. It reads ePub and PDF files but is trying to achieve a eBook motif and the intent is for it to be the only product from Adobe for eBook reading. Today most people read eBooks in PDF with standard Adobe products which aren't optimized for this use.

Having said that ePUB is not connected to DE. There are other readers that can read ePUB and there will likely be readers that will not read ePUB directly but will convert a publishers ePUB document to their internal format. This is how all of the early readers worked. At the publication level there was once compatibility in GEB readers, Microsoft readers, MobiPocket readers and some others. This has subsequently been lost as these companies went their own way. Hopefully ePUB will bring them back together again along with some of the newer players.

Having said that ePUB is not connected to DE. There are other readers that can read ePUB and there will likely be readers that will not read ePUB directly but will convert a publishers ePUB document to their internal format. This is how all of the early readers worked. At the publication level there was once compatibility in GEB readers, Microsoft readers, MobiPocket readers and some others. This has subsequently been lost as these companies went their own way. Hopefully ePUB will bring them back together again along with some of the newer players.

Read more about PDF, ePUB and many other topics in the wiki.

Dale

Dale,

Does ePub have any connection at all with the Open eBook (OEB) standard? That seems to work extremely well for those devices which support it. As you know, both MobiPocket and MS Reader (LIT) files are OEB books in a custom "wrapper", which is why it's so easy to convert LIT to Mobi (just "explode" LIT to OEB, and then rebuild the OEB to Mobi).

Does ePub have any connection at all with the Open eBook (OEB) standard? That seems to work extremely well for those devices which support it. As you know, both MobiPocket and MS Reader (LIT) files are OEB books in a custom "wrapper", which is why it's so easy to convert LIT to Mobi (just "explode" LIT to OEB, and then rebuild the OEB to Mobi).

Yes it is then next generation of OEB. check the wiki for details. the eb1150 is also OEB as is the REB 1100.